Fatigue Crack Growth Behavior of NR and HNBR Based Vulcanizates with Potential Application to Track Pad for Heavy Weight Vehicles

Generally, field performance of elastomeric track pad components has been poor, especially for the medium to heavy tonnage tracked vehicles, which are operated on the hilly cross-country course. The service life of these track pad, is affected not only by the terrain and environmental conditions but also by the speed, cornering, braking, weight of the vehicle, and the track tread design. In this research, modulus, tearing energy, and the rate of crack propagation of vulcanizates are evaluated by changing base materials to improve the service time of track pad. By increasing the contents of carbon black, modulus, tearing energy, and fatigue crack growth resistance of vulcanizates improved. Compared with the NR vulcanizate, the HNBR vulcanizate had a higher value of tearing energy. The rate of crack propagation of vulcanizates using smaller size carbon black was slower than that using larger size carbon black. When the HNBR was blended with the ZSC, the tearing energy of the vulcanizates was a little reduced because of the high modulus but the crack propagation rate was reduced significantly. In the relation between the crack propagation rate and the strain energy release rate, though up to 100% strain were applied to specimens, the slope on the log scale ($\beta$) varied between 1.72 and 2.3 with the kind of elastomer.